HR: 1340h
AN: A53B-0881    [Abstracts]
TI: Large Shift in Endemic Oak Ranges due to Projected, Future Regional Climate Change in California
AU: * Kueppers, L M
EM: kueppers@es.ucsc.edu
AF: Department of Earth Sciences, UC Santa Cruz 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 United States
AU: Sloan, L C
EM: lcsloan@es.ucsc.edu
AF: Department of Earth Sciences, UC Santa Cruz 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 United States
AU: Snyder, M A
EM: msnyder@es.ucsc.edu
AF: Department of Earth Sciences, UC Santa Cruz 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 United States
AU: Zavaleta, E S
EM: zavaleta@ucsc.edu
AF: Environmental Studies Department, UC Santa Cruz 1156 High Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95064 United States
AB: Native oaks are a prominent feature of California's landscape. For more than a century they have been under direct pressure from human land use including grazing, vineyard and orchard development, and urban expansion. In the coming century they face the additional threat of regional climate change. We used maps of potential and realized blue and valley oak ({\it Quercus douglasii} and {\it Q. lobata}) ranges with data on historical climate (1970-2000) and soil properties to build statistical models of potential habitat for these California endemic oaks. We then estimated the change in regional climate over the next 100 years due to increases of 1 % per year in global greenhouse gas concentrations, using output from the regional climate model RegCM2.5. The climate simulations lead to decreased precipitation and warmer summer temperatures throughout the current geographic range of these two oaks, resulting in the loss of most of their current habitat. Areas with potentially suitable climates are more restricted after climate change, occurring in the northern one-third of the state, a region currently occupied by conifer forest. Previous studies of acorn production, seedling establishment, and growth rates reinforce these findings, and support our conclusion that protected areas currently containing these oak species may be insufficient to preserve future populations.
UR: http://www.es.ucsc.edu/$\sim$kueppers/home
DE: 9350 North America
DE: 1699 General or miscellaneous
DE: 1851 Plant ecology
DE: 0400 Biogeosciences
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2004 AGU Fall Meeting